Case Studies in the Achievement of Air Superiority - Air Force ...

AIR SUPERIORITY
A much older study which caused something of a sensation when it first came
out is Derek Wood and Derek Dempster, The Narrow Margin (London: Hutchinson,
1961), by two young journalists who were boys at the time of the battle. Norman
Franks has recently written The Air Battle ofDunkirk (London: Kimber, 1983) based
on PRO records and interviews with survivors.
There is as yet no biography of Leigh-Mallory. The original standard authorized
biography of Dowding was Basil Collier’s Leader of the Few (London: Jarrolds,
1957). But after the Sholto Douglas memoirs appeared, that terribly correct and
reticent commander, Lord Dowding, decided that he needed to say something, and
he asked Robert Wright, who had been his personal assistant during the battle, to
produce a new book. The result was The Man Who Won the Battle of Brituin (New
York: Scribners, 1969). But Park never wrote his memoirs, and his story was not
told until after his death when a fellow New Zealander, Vincent Orange, who had
access to the records, wrote Sir Keith Park (London: Methuen, 1984), at last giving
him his due.
Other works exist, and more will no doubt appear. Books besides those listed
here are referred to in the chapter footnotes. It remains, however, to comment
briefly on the documentary resources. While some materials are available at the
RAF’s beautiful Battle of Britain Museum complex at Hendon, the bulk of the documents
are housed at the Public Records Office at Kew, and the photographs are at
the Imperial War Museum at Lambeth (both in London). The place to start for the
PRO is the paperback The Second World War: A Guide to Documents in the Public
Record OfJice (1972), for which there is supplement No. 16, “Information on Operational
Records of the Royal Air Force.” The papers are divided into blocks, such
as AIR 16 for Fighter Command. The problem, then, is to know how the records
were accumulated. The Form 540 provides in one part a log of squadron activities
and, in another, details of all flying activities. Useful material lurks here if time can
be spared to study the records. For this chapter, Dowding’s dispatch and his comments
upon it, orders of battle (issued daily), returns from the Equipment Officer
(also daily), which give detailed information as to the serviceability of aircraft, personnel
reports, and the like were consulted, as is indicated in the notes. These were
obtained through a continuous exchange of ideas and information with a former
RAF officer who is now a professional researcher and who was, therefore, also able
to offer considerable guidance to the materials containing the items I believed would
be useful. As historians break into new areas, discovering the nomenclature of the
documentation becomes part of the puzzle to be solved. In this case both Dowding
and Park wrote very full accounts and memoranda, and there is a recently declassified
multivolume history of the Air Ministry, but as yet, there is no history of the Air
Staff.
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